‘Islam Awakes!‘ That’s what the news ticker said on the monitors of the press area of the European Council building on 4 February. Mubarak had already announced he was going. The European Council was in its usual secret session, closed to the press and closed to the public. On its agenda the topic of most vital interest to the public: Energy.

The European Union is the world’s greatest importer of energy. That is not a boast. That is a mark of shame. It is also a sign pointing to Europe’s greatest danger: Energy Blackmail. Europe has already experienced the effects of an oil embargo in the 1970s.

The EU pays 2.5% of its GDP on imported energy — money that could be used stimulate its own innovations, an energy efficiency economy and native energy production. On oil alone the EU spends an enormous 270 billion euros. It cost only a fraction of that to produce, as it flows freely from wells. The surplus profits are used too often against the welfare of Europeans and Americans. Instead Europe’s economy is still driven by Arab oil. Moreover it mostly comes from the Persian Gulf countries and is exported through a narrow and dangerous strait.

The poorer Arab States are now being aroused by their richer religious cousins. North African States are now much more mosque-orientated than only a decade ago. Daily habits and clothes have changed. More than piety is involved. Egypt is a key State between Saudi and Iranian power grabs. No wonder that the 86-year old Saudi King Abdullah was reportedly apoplectic at naive American attempts to unseat Mubarak.

‘The events in Tunisia and Egypt are the sign of the Islamic Awakening‘ and ‘an Islamic liberation movement‘ — these were the words of Iran’s Supreme Leader Khomenei. He addressed the Friday crowds for the first time in seven months. These movements will spell an ‘irreparable defeat‘ for the United States, he said to cheering crowds raising their fists and shouting ‘Death to America! Death to Israel!‘.

Did the Europe’s 27 leaders closeted in secret hear about Iran’s pronouncement on the Mediterranean revolution? Did anyone tell them that the leader of nuclear Iran was laying ideological claim to Europe’s southern frontiers? Are they talking about it now the Council has dispersed? We don’t know.

Through Egypt by ship and pipeline comes 5 per cent of the world’s oil and much of it destined for European and American consumers. Around 8 per cent of the world’s exports comes through the Suez canal. It is the major umbilical that attaches marine trade of Europe, the Near East and Asia. Who is behind this revolt? There are many factors, such as wanting the freedoms of the West across the water, a sense of purpose, work and an end to grinding poverty.

Others are more dangerous, including the Muslim Brethren, an organisation that for decades has spawned jihadi spin-offs worldwide. It has been called the mother of modern jihadis, including Iran and Al Qaida. Like Communism, Nazism and other isms, it is ideological to the core. It still retains its poisonous ideological connection with Nazism and the Arabic version of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the fictitious propaganda The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are widely published. Danish cartoons are not.

Its slogan is Islam is the Solution. But what is the question? What is life’s purpose? To die as a so-called martyr? It has not brought happiness, peace, satisfying work, productive industry or the conservation of Nature and the ecological betterment of the planet. Europe has rejected the Islamic solution intellectually and physically with great loss of blood at Tours, Vienna and many other times over a millennium and half. Internal documents of the Brotherhood cite that the goal is a kind of ‘grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.‘

Is the only way to show this solution to destroy the successful alternatives? How about a good example? A weak ideology turns to immoral action and illicit expansion, often by violence, intimidation or sabotage. That distracts people from deeper analysis that exposes its false assumptions. The weakest spot of such an ideology is exposed in a public debate.

Why do these ‘solutions’ require the death of Israel? Because Israel has allowed freedom of worship. The Israeli government also pays for the maintenance of mosques. It did not desecrate them or build synagogues on top of them. It has produced a high tech society out of penniless Jewish refugees expelled from Arab lands. It has turned a barren land into an exporter of food. It is an example that many tyrants want to hide from their populations.

The interest of Iran should be kept in mind. Its regime can only stay in power at home by attacking and eliminating all its opponents at home and attempting to expand abroad. Its propaganda is powerful and contrasts with the weak reply of the West.

Consider how Iran has created a sphere of influence and propaganda in the Near East in the last few years. This now nearly surrounds Israel. It has gained a decisive interest in Gaza where it has often supplied arms and rockets by sea and by land. This has overexcited the whole of the Muslim world. Iran has also paid for and trained the militant Hizballah movement in Lebanon and has succeeded to make this militant Shi’ite jihadist army an integral part of the government of the once peaceful country. Iran’s influence in Syria is also growing.

The Jordanian authorities are faced with a stark existential choice — bend to Tehran or be broken. That seems to be the ground why they have urged America to go to war against Iran, even though this would bring war and destruction to the entire region. The Jordanians see this catastrophe of war as a lesser evil than an inevitable total Shi’ite take-over of the whole region through intimidation and small arms. That would only lead to further major war elsewhere, a global jihad. The Iranian theocracy has as its avowed aim the destruction of America and Europe as the great satans.

Is Iran behind the troubles in Egypt? Is it taking an opportunistic hand in the uprising against Mubarak? Iran rather gave its hand away. Last week it accused Israel of supplying plane-loads of anti-riot material to Mubarak’s regime. That was swiftly denied by Jerusalem as nonsense. The fact of the matter is that in October last year — for some unknown reason — plane flights were resumed between Tehran and Egypt. Who authorized it? Strangely no one seems to know. Why is it significant? Simply because plane flights between the Shi’ite state and Egypt have been stopped not for a year or two but for thirty years.

For years President Mubarak had already warned the Muslims in neighbouring countries of the plans of the sectarian leaders of the Iranian Islamic Republic. ‘The Persians are trying to devour the Arab states,‘ he said. ‘A nuclear armed Iran with hegemonic ambitions is the greatest threat to Arab nations today,’ Mubarak told the Arab Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2009.

Now we know from WikiLeaks that all the neighbouring States are worried about what they consider the malevolent influence of Iran. The Saudis are calling Iran a ‘snake‘ whose head needs to be cut off. Why then did the Egyptians — the fiercest enemy of the Persians — do this most extraordinary thing? They chose this moment to agree to resume airflights with Tehran. They were cut in the days of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Revolution of 1979-80. At that time the Shah left Iran and in a final trip between the capitals took his plane to Egypt. It is an indication of the growing power of Iran in Egypt.

The revolutionaries have a longer memory than many European leaders — the Crusades are common talk. Are Europeans equally familiar with their past struggles with militant jihadis over 1500 years?

The Iranians can recall the vital need to control supply routes. At one stage, 2500 years ago, Egypt fell under the sword of the Persian monarchs Darius 1 and Cambyses of Persia. A three-language monument, unearthed by de Lesseps and now in Paris, declares the words of Darius that his men re-excavated the canal that links the Mediterranean with the Red Sea.

I am a Persian; setting out from Persia, I conquered Egypt. I ordered to dig this canal from the river that is called Nile and flows in Egypt, to the sea that begins in Persia. Therefore, when this canal had been dug as I had ordered, ships went from Egypt through this canal to Persia, as I had intended.

This was when the natives of the land were mainly Egyptians — that is Copts, whose language is similar to ancient Egyptian. Only later when the Egyptian Empire had been destroyed did the Greeks, the Romans and then the Arabs take over the land. Prior to that Egypt was one of the world’s greatest Christian countries. Many Arabs tend to believe civilisation only existed with Islam. The Persians remember they not only had a great civilisation but were controlling Egypt long before the Arabs arrived.

The Suez Canal itself can be seen as a historic goal for the Iranian regime. Today the Iranians have decisive influence in all the countries surrounding Israel, the only democracy in the entire Middle East.

The Iranians have no reason to be nice to those trying to thwart its nuclear plans. Europe is trying to impose crippling sanctions on the regime. If the Iranians gain influence on the Suez Canal they will have an additional stranglehold on Europe and its oil imports. The other route for oil from the Persian Gulf is by super-tanker around Africa. This too is becoming more dangerous. Witness the capture of hundreds of ships including a couple of tankers with enough oil for a fifth of the daily needs of the USA.

Who are these Somali pirates? They told Reuters: ‘We are Muslims. We are marines, coastguards — not pirates.‘ Really? They are jihadis. They are at war. One terrorist leader of the al-Shabaab-linked Mu’askar Ras Kamboni (also designated by the US State Department as a terrorist) said on Somali radio: ‘I can say the pirates are part of the Mujahedeen [religious fighters], because they are in a war with Christian countries who want to misuse the Somali coast.‘ Guilty people have poor reasoning. Stealing super tankers worth hundreds of millions of euros shipping oil peacefully hundreds of kilometres out in the Indian Ocean has nothing to do with the coast guards. Osama bin Laden was more frank when he praised the Somalis’ war of Islam against Christianity.

Maybe Europe’s leaders in the European Council briefly discussed the rising demand for ‘democracy‘ across North Africa. ‘Democracy‘? Islam? Who is right? They cannot both be right because there is no example of Islamic democracy in history. Democracy– that is the equality of everyone under law — is based on Judeo-Christian principles. Islam is based on the supremacy of the Islamic believer over the unbeliever. Effectively the voter may get one vote as in late Weimar Germany but only once. Iran shows that once the theocratic power has taken over they are not willing to give it up regardless of what the people vote. Hamas in Gaza is another example where those voted in to power then proceeded to kill and attack their electoral opponents of the Palestinian Authority. Gaza is one of the tentacles of Iran’s Shi’ite octopus — to use the Jordanian description.

The other Sunni countries have not been willing to allow overtly religious political parties (who might take over forever) or anti-religious parties (that religious fanatics oppose with suicide ‘martyrs’ as it would expose their methods, logical deficiencies and intolerance). With no philosophical or constitutional separation of secular from the religious powers, usually the military is needed to separate political competitors. The sword of Islam has been used frequently against unbelievers but also believers of the wrong hue.

Democracy as we know it is based on a religious or spiritual concept. Europe’s democracy allows atheists or secularists to survive and even thrive. It allows them to pose the most probing questions and make even blasphemous criticism of Christianity. A Judeo-Christian society thus provides tolerance of antagonistic views of its own religion. The reason is that truth is valued above all and must be examined with all critical faculties. Truth will out. The results are clear. Christianity in all its multiple human imperfections is growing worldwide without the sword, intimidation or blackmail.

That is not true for an atheist State. A secular regime like Soviet Communism was at war with spiritual values and the freedom of religion. Only a Judeo-Christian system can produce democracy. Atheistic ‘people’s democracies’ were hollow and false. The core of dialectic materialism was intellectually rotten.

Democracy is above all not something made quickly; Europe has taken more than a thousand years of Christianity to fashion it. In Africa we were forced to burn our bridges. Not only did we give the vote to an often illiterate population but what is worse, we turned power over to men who often had no training and who were exposed defenceless to all temptations of capriciousness and injustice. We tried to slacken the rhythm, to bring in controls; these were only frail preventive measures against the thrust of nationalism. I would like to be able to quote on this subject what Jacques Maritain, following Bergson, wrote more than twenty years ago, at the time when a more generous and Christian policy on our overseas territories was being elaborated. I will just keep to a few pertinent phrases:

‘We must realise that the part that instinct and irrationality plays is much larger role in the animation of a group than an individual. At a time when one people enters history claiming their political and social adulthood, large sections of mankind remain in a state of immaturity or suffering from an unhealthy reactions accumulated during the course of time and are still only sketching out or preparing themselves culturally to be called a people. Let us understand that to enjoy one’s privileges as an adult person without the risk of bankruptcy, a people must be capable of behaving as adults…

‘Nothing is easier for political fraudsters to exploit good principles for an illusion, nor is anything more disastrous than good principles badly applied…’

I conclude with Bergson that ‘democracy is essentially evangelical as it has love as its motor.’

Comments

I am amazed at the level of tolerance and respect for basic human rights depicted in your writing. For a moment there, I got an idea that all Muslims should either be enslaved or extinguished. Instead of me working on my reading skills, I suggest an independent research with an open mind and understanding of human rights would come in very handy to your journalistic repertoire.

Islam and democracy go hand in hand should you have bothered to seek to understand the religious principles as a person of knowledge and I presume, decent standard of common sense.

Second, please do not insult 1. something billion Muslims in the world by claiming that democracy belongs to one and only one religious group.

Human rights and responsibilities are a goal to attain for all societies. The first legal convention for free States was created in 1950 when Schuman and other Founding Fathers signed the Council of Europe’s Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. I hope you have corrected your false impression that the commentary is against anyone, least of all Muslims.

Europe’s initiative arose because much of the Continent was in WW2 under a slave system — forced labour, extermination camps and destruction of religious values. That was applied under both the neo-pagan Nazi regime as well as the atheistic Soviet regime. The Convention assures that all signatory States must assure freedom of religion and the freedom to be able to change one’s religion as well as the freedom of conscience and the freedom of communication including criticizing religious and political ideas.

Schuman maintained that only a society based on Christian principles that recognized the potential of all individuals for salvation provides the basis for equality under law or democracy. A society based on Christian principles allows open discussion for Atheists, Jews, Christian sects, Muslims, animists, Buddhists and Hindus. The same applies to the Jewish State of Israel where there is freedom for Christians, Baha’is and Muslims and all who do not revert to violence. This contrasts starkly with the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza. Both demand a Jewish-free territory with a death penalty to any Muslim or Arab who would sell a house or land to a Jew.

Atheism treats religious believers of all types as second-class citizens. Nazism treated Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the confessing Lutheran Church as enemies to be destroyed. Islamic States are in the logical impossibility of maintaining a democracy because non-believers in Islam are treated as second-class citizens, either as outright infidels or at best people of the Book, (the Hebrew Bible which is not generally read or available in Islamic societies). They are then granted second-class citizenship involving higher taxes etc as dhimmis. That is not democracy.

While one can applaud a call for freedom, one should also be aware that too often in history the removal of one ‘tyrant’ leads to another sort of tyranny and the loss of freedom again. The criterion in Egypt is that the Muslim community should recognize the possibility of individual Muslims changing their religion to that of the Coptic Church. According to a recent survey, four out of five Egyptians are of the opinion that any so-called Muslim ‘apostates’ should be executed. That is far from democracy.

A islamic/Arab religion mixing with Democracy was predicted 2600 years ago in the Bible.

In 2 Thessalonians it says that “the man of lawlessness will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God and worshiped”.

In other words, he will declare himself God, but what god? And of what religion?

In Daniel 2 we have the prophecy of king Nebuchadnezzer’s vision called the “Great image”. This image consisted of five future kingdoms that would rule over Israel, beginning with Nebuchadnezzer’s Babylon.

The fifth and last kingdom, would be a kingdom that would rule in the last days, the Bible says that this kingdom would be one of both mire and metal or “iron mixed with clay”, the key word being mixed.

I believe it’s not a coincidence that this verb mixed occurs only three times throughout the bible and all three occurrence are found in Daniel 2: 40-43.

So by knowing the Aramaic and Hebrew meaning of this verb, we can understanding what form of governments the iron and clay depict, and we can know the identity of this last days religion.

What is the translation of this verb mixed? It is the word “Arab.”

Now here’s the kicker! We know that any religion outside of Christianity is a religion built by Lucifer in the spirit of antichrist. Right?

Now in Isaiah 14: 13-14 (a prophecy about Lucifer’s fall) it says:

‘You (Lucifer) said in your heart’ “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God… I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”

The Hebrew word for “ascend”, as in “I will ascend to heaven… I will make myself like the Most High”. Is the word Allah.

Thank you for your Biblical comment and speculation. The (first century) quotation of Paul from 2 Thessalonians 2 refers to lawlessness and perdition — which is not the same thing as democracy. Denying divine law is a different matter. In Daniel 2 you are right to say their are five kingdoms or rather empires mentioned (separated as iron, bronze, clay, silver, gold in v45). Iron is usually taken with some justification as being the Roman Empire. But the fifth is not the last. The text you cite is in Aramaic and the word ‘mix’ is used in different forms, for example as a past participle, merab, but this does not yield ‘arab’ directly; only the infinitive bears any resemblance. The term designating Arab peoples in Hebrew and Arabic is taken by some to mean mixed people. The fifth empire should be described principally by the noun, potter’s clay, rather than a verbal form acting as a descriptive. Many things or peoples are mixed. This noun requires an explanation. As for the quotation from Isaiah, the word ‘ascend’ is a common one meaning to mount, to go up and similar things in many other places of the Hebrew Bible. It is used for going up, that is, travelling to Jerusalem. Mount Zion. It does not have the designation you give to it elsewhere. The prophecy of Daniel 2 was made known almost simultaneously to five people — to each in individual dreams, v23. This proved to the entire empire (to whom the story was later published as here in Aramaic, v47, 48) the divine origin of the prophecy. Five people having the same dream also indicated the interpretation could not come from men but from the divine Giver of such dreams, v28. The present day interpretation too comes only from the same source. Normal human beings who are not so privileged with a prophetic office as Daniel can best understand prophecy after the fulfillment not before.

The origin, purpose and future of supranational and European Democracy

About: EURDEMOCRACY

Robert Schuman wrote a book, For Europe, incorporating some of his speeches explaining the principles of a new, more perfect form of democracy that would unite the existing European democracies in a supranational European Community. These comments here draw on that founding philosophy that united Europe's Allies and former enemies in a constructive new entity. Schuman said it would change world politics. It introduced, he said, a new stage in the history of civilization. More information on Schuman and democracy on www.schuman.info Reproduction is permitted freely provided no profit is made in the process, otherwise permission must be obtained. (c) Bron, D Price asserts his moral right to be considered the author. Information: dp@schuman.info
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